The US company is seeking to increase the share of its products manufactured in India to 25% by 2025
Apple is likely to manufacture its iPhone 7, which is expected to be launched in 2025, in India instead of China, the newspaper Mint has reported, citing comments on a Medium blog by Chinese analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier this week.
“It will be the first time for Apple to begin development of a new iPhone model outside of China,” Kuo wrote.
He noted that the share of iPhones made in India could increase to 20-25% by 2024 from 12-14% in the current fiscal year, “if all goes well.”
While most of these devices are now assembled at Indian factories operated by Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn, Apple’s recent deal with Indian conglomerate Tata Group to assemble iPhones will allow the US giant to “strengthen its relationship with the Indian government.”
Earlier this year, India’s commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, said Apple was looking to increase the share of its products manufactured in India to 25% by 2025.
Kuo’s post comes a week after Tata, a diversified group with mining and steel assets and that manufactures automobiles, weaponry, and electronics, and also owns India’s national air carrier, Air India, announced it would start assembling iPhones for both domestic and global markets. The company has acquired a local manufacturing unit of another Taiwan-based major, Wistron Corp, for an estimated $125 million.
“This move will benefit future sales of iPhones and other products in India and is critical to Apple’s growth over the next decade,” noted Kuo, who last year predicted that Tata may cooperate with Pegatron or Wistron to develop the iPhone assembly business in India.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this week that the company had achieved an all-time record for quarterly revenues in India in the quarter ending in September, even though Apple doesn’t provide India-specific revenue numbers in its earnings. The company posted overall revenues of $89.5 billion, down 1% year-on-year, in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. It is fast closing in on $10 billion in annual revenues in India, Mint reported.
Commenting on the company’s operations in India, Cook said: “We have a low share in a large market, and so it would seem there’s a lot of headroom there.” He added India was an “extraordinary market,” with a great number of people moving into the middle class. “We put two retail stores there. They’re doing better than we anticipated. It’s still early going, but they’re off to a good start, and I couldn’t be happier with how things are going at the moment,” he was quoted by BQ Prime as saying.
Apple could end this financial year with a 7% market share in India, a traditionally Android-dominated market, the Economic Times reported last month. According to the outlet, iPhone shipments to India grew 68% (year-on-year) in the first half of this year.
Meanwhile, Apple was in the news earlier this week when several opposition leaders in India claimed to have received e-mails from the company warning them about “state-sponsored” attackers that were potentially remotely trying to compromise the iPhones associated with their IDs. The company later released a statement saying that it was not attributing the attack to any “specific” state actor. The Indian government has called on Apple to join its investigation into the alleged attacks.
